Program Review

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The NJIT Program Review Process, the centerpiece of the university’s student learning assessment initiative, has four objectives: to provide a forum for the assessment and improvement of all degree granting and university programs; to demonstrate continuous improvement in the delivery of educational curricula; to promote a culture of assessment by building a cohesive assessment strategy; and to create a central, web-based repository for assessment design and supporting documents.

These objectives are yielding a university-wide forum for collaboration as we share the visions we have for our program, the strategies we use to achieve our program goals, tactics by which we implement these goals, and the metrics we use to measure our success. Our methods of assessment of educational effectiveness are thus aligned with our methods of assessment of institutional context.

Because program review at NJIT is viewed as a research process, we are investigating new ways of understanding student achievement and reporting our findings. We are dedicated to designing and promoting program assessment initiatives within and beyond NJIT.

Previous Program Review Process: Examples

From 2000 through 2009 NJIT used a rigorous program review process that functioned as a program audit. Criteria for the review included faculty qualifications and scholarly productivity, research dollars, teaching loads, cost per credit hour, enrollment, retention and graduation rates, time to degree, degrees awarded, courses offered, and so forth. As an audit process through which inefficient or underutilized programs could be terminated, departments were reluctant to participate. As well, the process offered little that would help instructors design a gap analysis—a determination of that which students learned, where students had fallen short, and where curricular revision was justified.

Simply put, the old program review process was not robust enough to provide a framework to assess and monitor student learning outcomes. The new program review process implemented in 2010 changes the focus from a contentious audit to a forward-looking model: one that helps the university determine that students have knowledge, skills, and competencies consistent with NJIT goals. The new program review process is enabling NJIT to determine that, at graduation, our students have achieved goals appropriate to New Jersey’s science and technology research university.

Listed below are our former Program Review Guidelines and examples of programs that were reviewed successfully under the former process.